Prior to the advent of hand-held mobile computing devices (“MCD's”) such as the Apple® iPhone® and the like, a person wishing to locate a branch of a financial institution (“FI”) could look up the FI in a telephone book and view a list of its branches. A person could then consult a paper map to determine which branch was closest to the person's location, and an appropriate route to travel to that branch. This was a time-consuming and cumbersome process, and along the way the person might pass a closer or more convenient branch of another FI which of course was not provided in the telephone book listing.
Use of the internet would make the prior art process of finding an FI branch marginally more efficient by providing an on-line listing of an FI's branches. In addition, instead of a consulting a paper map, the person could use an online map service such as Google® Maps which would provide an electronic version of the prior art paper map, plus a list of directions for travelling to the desired FI branch location.
However, the FI customer was still left with several undesirable problems. First, the listing of directions provided by a prior art map service was difficult to follow because it typically bore no relationship to the three-dimensional view of a person on a city street attempting to navigate to a desired location. Second, the electronic or paper map bore no relationship to the three-dimensional view of a person navigating to a FI branch. Third, the prior art method did not provide a FI customer with the locations of competing FI branches which may be closer or more convenient and that could serve the customer's needs. Therefore an improved FI branch locator is needed.